“Because”—­Cornelia came to the rescue of her sire; but her impetuosity was either unsupported by a reason, or she stooped to fit one to the comprehension of the interrogator:  “Oh, because—­do you know, we have very select music at our church?”

“We have a highly-paid organist,” added Arabella.

“Recently elected,” said Adela.

“Ah! mon Dieu!” Mr. Pericles ejaculated.  “Some music sound well at afar—­mellow, you say.  I prefer your charch music mellow.”

“Won’t you come?” cried Wilfrid, with wonderful briskness.

“No.  Mellow for me!”

The Greek’s grinders flashed, and Wilfrid turned off from him sulkily.  He saw in fancy the robber-Greek prowling about Wilson’s farm, setting snares for the marvellous night-bird, and it was with more than his customary inattention to his sisters’ refined conversation that he formed part of their male escort to the place of worship.

Mr. Pericles met the church-goers on their return in one of the green bowery lanes leading up to Brookfield.  Cold as he was to English scenes and sentiments, his alien ideas were not unimpressed by the picture of those daintily-clad young women demurely stepping homeward, while the air held a revel of skylarks, and the scented hedgeways quickened with sunshine.

“You have missed a treat!” Arabella greeted him.

“A sermon?” said he.

The ladies would not tell him, until his complacent cynicism at the notion of his having missed a sermon, spurred them to reveal that the organ had been handled in a masterly manner; and that the voluntary played at the close of the service was most exquisite.

“Even papa was in raptures.”

“Very good indeed,” said Mr. Pole.  “I’m no judge; but you might listen to that sort of playing after dinner.”

Mr. Pericles seemed to think that was scarcely a critical period, but he merely grimaced, and inquired:  “Did you see ze player?”

“Oh, no:  they are hidden,” Arabella explained to him, “behind a curtain.”

“But, what!” shouted the impetuous Greek:  “have you no curiosity?  A woman!  And zen, you saw not her?”

“No,” remarked Cornelia, in the same aggravating sing-song voice of utter indifference:  “we don’t know whether it was not a man.  Our usual organist is a man, I believe.”

The eyes of the Greek whitened savagely, and he relapsed into frigid politeness.

Wilfrid was not present to point their apprehensions.  He had loitered behind; but when he joined them in the house subsequently, he was cheerful, and had a look of triumph about him which made his sisters say, “So, you have been with the Copleys:”  and he allowed them to suppose it, if they pleased; the Copleys being young ladies of position in the neighbourhood, of much higher standing than the Tinleys, who, though very wealthy, could not have given their brother such an air, the sisters imagined.